


Drowning in Dust

by ofWildflowersandPoisonedEarth



Category: Carnivale, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: AU, Carnivale - Freeform, Depression in general, F/M, Great Depression, Guns, Major Character Death(s), Smut (eventual), Southern Gothic, Violence, atmospheric horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2018-10-01 05:47:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10182011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofWildflowersandPoisonedEarth/pseuds/ofWildflowersandPoisonedEarth
Summary: Dark AU, set in the bleak, dying world of the 1930s in Spearman, Texas.Shane's life has been anything but easy.  Finally things seem to be going right; he's only a month away from a tryout for the Cleveland Indians.  Even so, he just can't quite seem to shake the dust.  Nothing feels right.With Rick out of town to convene the formation of a task force to deal with a string of unexplained deaths in the state, it falls to Shane to keep an eye on his best friend's wife Lori, who has grown distant and depressed by the stark isolation of her life.When a strange man appears in Spearman, a pull toward destruction seems exerted on everyone.  There couldn't have been a worse time for a Sheriff to leave town.A story about the virtue of contentment, and the irrevocable nature of regret.





	1. The Windmill Town

Spearman, Texas. It had sounded so charming when Hansford county had dubbed it "The Windmill Town". What it was that windmills were for again, the people here were left to consider now. It was for the relentless grind, taking something whole and reducing it to a powder so broken down a mere breath could carry it away. Now there was no grist for the grinders. Only wind, endless, and eroding every living thing left in a dying place.

  
Shane Walsh looked across the barren fields as he walked down the empty gravel road, the soles of his boots crudely patched from the inside with cardboard salvaged from an empty Borax box, and wondered if anything ever could grow here again, or if this would be how the world would end; all the fertile soil blown away, choking the life from everything in its path, before it reached the oceans or the mountains to be lost forever. "The Windmill Town." The tower of Babel. A mockery. If the tryout for the Indians didn't pan out next month up in Ohio, and all he had to show for the trying was the cap they'd already given him, Shane wondered if he might not have to pull up stakes and see if he couldn't find a job in the mines down in Babylon. The dry grey sun stung his cracked lips as he pulled his cap down tighter to shield his eyes from the blinding dullness of the day.

  
He'd never really fancied the dark and the dust, even when people talked up all the good money there was just sitting on the table in those mining towns. But now Shane realized that if something didn't change soon, it wouldn't make one particle of difference. There wasn't one place left in the world he knew that wasn't being slowly drowned in those two things.

  
Shane had run the General Store in town with his grandmother after the mean son of a bitch she was married to had finally died when Shane was twelve. His whole family had been lost to a particularly bad flu one winter in Vidalia, Georgia, so at nine years old, he'd taken a train out to Spearman to live with Grandma Jean.

  
The three years his grandfather, Silas, had lived past Shane's arrival had been one protracted date with the buckle end of his belt, for any, or no, particular reason. At twelve years old, Shane had been filled with a manic and unfettered glee when he'd found him dead in the barn, head kicked clean in by a gentle old swaybacked mare his grandfather had foaled to the point of cruelty. Something about the justice of it seemed almost Biblical. Shane's only moment of regret or hesitation over it had been the day a couple of years later when he realized if the old prick was still alive, he was now big enough to have caught that buckle, yarded the belt out of the old man's hands, and beaten him to death with it himself.

  
At the time, business in the store was booming, with the population of Spearman growing steadily. Shane's Grandma Jean was a capable woman, to whom a great deal of the responsibility had always fell, and she'd certainly been the brains of the operation, but it didn't change the fact she was a slight woman, who despite her sinews couldn't lift half of what they sold. Shane had quit school without a complete eighth grade to take on working with her, but to him, it never mattered. He learned everything he needed to know by doing it, or by watching with a perplexed, diagnostic curiosity what other people strained at in their own lives. And besides, he saw more of his best friend after hours anyway, and always had, since the Grimes' family homestead was only a quarter mile away from his own yard.

  
This walk, down this road, over all these years, had become a familiar one; one that Shane had made countless times, and even more in recent months, since his Grandma Jean had passed on. Fact was, he didn't have anyone to cook for him anymore, and Rick was married. More than that, losing his grandmother had changed something in Shane; he felt paranoid sometimes, a responsibility for all those he loved growing from a concern to an obsessive vigil. He thought more and more now about all the things that could go wrong, and what he could do to prevent them.

  
When the rain had stopped falling a couple of years ago, and the black blizzards had began to billow and blow through, his grandmother's fragile disposition hadn't been suited to it. What started as a dust-dry cough became a ceaseless gasping bark, made wet with blood. Shane had watched as she withered, shredded inside by breathing nothing but fine grit. Slowly, she'd succumbed, lungs filled with fluid, drowning her in the worst drought in history. She'd weighed so little by the end, that Rick alone helped bear her pall with Shane.

  
People were fleeing the town like rats from a sinking ship. Walsh Sundry, the only general store in town, still did business, but not much. No one was buying much of anything, nothing was being built, and no one with an active account had paid for over a year. A few months ago when Rick was elected Sheriff, he'd deputized Shane to help him make ends meet. Shane reached down and fingered the still-shiny star pinned to his chest, unable not to think it would have been nicer if they'd have issued him a new pair of shoes rather than a useless trinket to throw glare in his eyes, as he kicked a stone from the road at a Russian thistle blowing by. He didn't know where those even came from, unable to remember seeing one growing alive in at least three summers.

  
As Shane turned to walk up the lane, he saw Rick, saddling his horse outside the barn already.

Shane wolf whistled to get his attention. "Hey Rick!", he hollered across the sparse dirt yard, "You not takin' the car?"

  
As Shane approached, Rick answered, "No. Not this time. Didn't you hear? Con's is shuttin' down. Not enough people drivin' nowadays. Couldn't pay for a new shipment when what they had left went stale in the tank. Whole family's already left town. Rumor is, creditor's are after them."

  
Shane took his cap off to wipe his brow, shaking his head. "Whole world thinks of Texas, what'd they think of? Cattle and oil. An' y'er tellin' me, all this oil, an' we don't have a gas station anymore? See, that's funny, man.", Shane responded slow, licking the bead of blood from his lower lip that appeared when he'd dared to grin, feeling his parched lip split in the dry wind.

  
Rick laughed, squinting into the red eastern sun. "Yeah. Not that funny. 'Nuther reason I gotta go up to Parryton. We got money in the budget for gassin' up the Model B. County invests in that flatty for us, an' now we can't use it because'a this. Might see if I pay up front, if the station there might deliver until someone comes in to take over Con's. You know how that place is. Different immigrant in there every year."

  
"S'pose they're accustomed to adversity or they wouldn't keep trying' it. Even in this nightmare, good luck convincin' 'em the American Dream's on hold until we get some rain.", Shane answered back, hands on his hips, digging down into the dirt with the heel of his boot. "So th'tank's dry?", he finally asked, "You can't just drive it up to Parryton, fill there, an' come back?"

  
"No. I can't. Not even fumes left. An' the reserve's dry too. Care to wager a guess on how that came to be?", Rick asked his oldest friend, tightening the saddle to his horse.

  
"Can't afford to be bettin' these days. Not losin' anyway. You neither. But I'd reckon this's a one word answer. Leon?" Shane knew he'd be right. If this wasn't the one word answer to pretty much every question about a royal screw up, it might have made Shane smile, but this was a joke that had grown so old that even Shane felt only aggravation. "Why don't you fire him, man? I'd say the guy fucks the dog, but I doubt he could find his own dick with both hands, even with a dog sniffin' at it. Cut him loose."

  
Laughing despite himself, and despite Shane's suddenly dead serious face, Rick answered, "You know the answer to that. If council wasn't loaded up with Bassetts, and hadn't always been, I'd make heads roll. But who am I? They're gunnin' for my job as it is, since I beat him out for it. An' the last thing I need is them questioning my department. I robbed Peter to pay Paul a hundred ways t'Black Sunday in order to bring you on. Don't need an inquisition."

  
"Yeah, I know. You need me t'hold things down at the station while you're away?"

  
The tension in Shane's voice was thick. He'd felt keenly aware he could be seen as a burden damned near his whole life, and he was determined not to be. He appreciated the extra income, and thanked Rick for the opportunity all the time, in words and in deeds, to the point he'd paid the favor back ten times over. Just the month before, he'd wired the station and installed all the matching electric lights the store had left, since no one was buying them anyway. It never felt like quite enough though. Funny thing about favors was that it never seemed to matter who did more; all that ever seemed to matter was who'd gone first, and Shane felt that he was always the one following up, hence always falling short.

  
"I know you got the store, an' you been neglectin' it some on my account, so I got Leon working. I'd be obliged if you'd check in there on him a time or two, make sure he's not asleep at the switch, but I had somethin' else in mind. Lori's as mad as a hornet that she can't come along, what with the car out of commission. This's th'first time I've left her alone since we got married, an' I think she's more afraid than angry, really.", Rick said, rubbing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

  
Shane clapped a reassuring hand firmly on his friend's shoulder.

  
Rick had met Lori in Abilene nearly ten years ago now, and had fell hard. She hadn't come around right away to the idea of a farm boy from Spearman, but a year later, her daddy had rented out and shut down the entire Simmons University campus for a day so they could be married and make full use of the grounds. Shane had never been in a photograph before that day, and it was the first time he'd heard of a wedding being held anywhere but a church or a court house. He'd never seen Rick so happy, and Lori seemed to float on a cloud, but Shane had spent the day shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot and trying not to break anything or step on any of the carefully polished toes, or shoes, at the affair. He'd also tried diligently not to think about Nora Everly, and in doing so, spent much of the evening drinking some bootlegged whiskey he'd managed to get, alone on a patch of cool grass, back when that still grew here, hidden from the revelrie of the other guests.

  
Lori actually adjusted to life in Spearman better than either man had expected. She'd become close with Jean Walsh, being such close neighbors, and quietly picked up from her all the cues on how to fit in. She'd joined a temperance league until that went by the wayside, and then had thrown the first wet party at their home when prohibition was repealed. Though Rick didn't attend church, she went with Jean any Sunday that Rick worked, and was a part of the ladies group. In short, she'd traded her beaded cocktail dresses for calico, grown her hair long, and learned to be content. When she was young, life had seemed so subjective. This was where she was. If those shapeless cotton rags were all the rage here, then she wanted to be in fashion where she was.

  
But in the past couple of years, she'd grown quiet and restless. Shane had noted the difference, and not just in her. As she'd become silent over suppers, sitting there, pushing food around with her fork, a far off look in her eyes, Rick had greyed around the ears and seemed prone to outbursts of temper, lines appearing almost overnight between his eyes. Rick had told Shane, troubled, a few months back, that he'd come home from work to find Lori in their room, all her old dresses laid out on the bed, her hair pinned under. She'd been crying hysterically because she'd burned a beloved copy of a book of short stories in the cook stove that day, and didn't have a clue why she'd done it.

  
Shane hadn't known how to explain to his friend that he thought he knew why; he hadn't been able to make the understanding form itself into words that could be spoken out loud. But what he sensed was that playing at something and being something were different, and sometimes people didn't know which was more important. Lori had played at fitting in, but the fun of being a successful impostor had waned, eventually becoming a tedious chore. On the other hand, she'd preferred the early stages of love. Shane believed that women often did, more than men. Women liked the shine and sparkle, being chased. They wanted to be wooed forever. Men only wooed so that someday they could get comfortable. The instant Rick had gotten comfortable, Lori had began to slip from his grasp, resenting his love, believing it tarnished with time, and longing for the uptempo romance of their courtship, convincing herself that his comfort represented boredom and a lack of enthusiasm for her.

  
"Of course. You got it, man.", Shane said after a pause, knowing the full scope of the real reasons that Rick wanted Lori checked on often. Parroting his thoughts, he continued out loud, "I'll check in often. Make sure she doesn't want for nothin' in your absence, make sure she's safe an' knows it. I'm sure she's not mad, just disappointed about the car is all. How long are you away again?"

  
Rick just nodded his thanks silently. "Well, I'm about to leave, shortly. It's Tuesday? I'll be gone tonight and all day the next day, an' plan to be home late Thursday mornin'."

  
Just then, as the two men stood talking by the barn, the house door opened. Lori didn't step out, and the door was open but a moment before a scruffy mutt that looked like a threadbare tasseled footstool on wheels barreled down the steps and across the yard, straight to Shane's feet, tail like a fan slapping off his shins as the dog whined to be played with.

  
Shane had tried to wave to Lori, and was still standing with his unacknowledged wave hanging in the air, when he bent down to roughhouse with the dog.

  
"Didn't turn out to be much of a guard dog, this one.", he laughed, looking up at Rick's still pinched face.

  
"No. She isn't even that good'a company. Likes you better than either of us."

  
Shane laughed. "It's her name. She's punishing y'all. What is it Lori's callin' her now?"

  
Rick rolled his eyes, just slightly, but Shane saw it. Wanted to tell him not to get caught by Lori at it, but knew better. "Garbo.", Rick said as though he were almost unsure. "I feel stupid just sayin' it."

  
"Well. You know I wanted to call her Tumbleweed. I mean, look at 'er. Cries out to be called Tumbleweed.", Shane said with a grin as the dog tumbled excitedly at his feet as he scratched her ears. "But Lori's a woman. They like glamour, an' an escape. Like to think of things bein' better than what they are. Don't s'pose Tumbleweed makes her think'a any of those things. When a woman's sad, laughin' doesn't cheer her up. Jus' turns her bitter."

  
"Yeah?", Rick said grinning again. "An' what would you know about women, other than how to take down stockings fast without puttin' runs in 'em?"

  
"Well, uh, I guess according to you, not a damned thing.", Shane said with a hearty laugh. "An', for your information, I prefer em' with their stockings on, man. The kind with those black seams down the back. Shoes too, if I got the choice. Makes their ass look great, an' makes 'em quicker to get out the door afterward."

  
Truth be told, Shane hadn't had a woman in his bed in ages, and wouldn't have been in a hurry to rush one out at this point in his life. Last thing he'd do was tip his hand to it though. Shane had never felt secure in wanting a thing in his life. Wanting a thing meant you'd never have it, and made the loss painful when it didn't need to be. Shane had seen fit for many years now to rather choose to want whatever it was he did have, than pine for what he didn't. Couldn't lose if you didn't try. Meaningless conquests had been a fun distraction that he'd extracted plenty of pleasure from, and even moments of respite and sanctuary. Even physical intimacy, an artificial intimacy, left you both laid bare with one truth you shared; being naked together and utterly alone in it.

  
Where smart ass comments were concerned, Shane had a very deep well. Having drawn that gem from it, he changed the subject back to Rick's trip to Perryton.

  
"So what's this meeting with the Sheriff's Department up there about anyway?", Shane asked, still bent down to the dirt, playing with the dog.

  
"Not entirely sure. They were vague, just said they want a task force across the state to work on this case. Some scofflaw, maybe turned outlaw. Goes by the name Henry 'Hack' Scudder. Said he's implicated in some disappearances. 'Anomalous in nature', I think, is how they described it. For some reason, they seem to think he might be in the state. Might have some interest in gettin' to Babylon." Rick answered this cautiously. Shane was a talker, though he'd never admit it. The last thing Rick wanted was Lori hearing one breath of the details, especially now.

  
Shane looked back at Rick, his eyes narrowed, and brows drawn close. You don't know a man from the age of nine and not know when he's not really answering the question you asked. But you also didn't know a man from age nine and not know when he didn't want to tell you something. Shane knew he could get more out of Rick just by asking, but he also knew his friend probably had his reasons for not telling him more. It didn't matter; Shane knew if it ever did, he'd end up knowing the whole story anyway. In the meantime, he knew a thing about people. If you pulled a secret out that they wanted to keep, they'd never feel the same about you again. Everyone wanted the same thing: to confess. But most people liked only the catharsis, and not knowing what they inevitably would about themselves; that they were just like everyone else. So though he knew half of Rick wanted this tooth pulled, Shane left it alone.

  
"Well.", Shane said with a forceful exhale, giving poor Garbo one last pet on the head before standing. "I should let you say your goodbyes to Lori before you go. Go ahead and let her know I'll be by later this afternoon to check on her. Better head into town myself and get the store open, make sure Leon isn't givin' us back over to Mexico, or somethin'."

  
Rick didn't laugh or smile. Shane knew why. Over his shoulder as he left, he shouted back to Rick, pulling his new Indians cap down tight, "Lori'll be fine alone, man. She's stronger than you think."

  
Rick watched Shane walk away, wondering himself what the next few months held. Rick knew as well as anyone that Shane's life had held very little happiness; Silas Walsh was one of the cruelest men he'd ever seen, and Rick knew Shane hadn't all of a sudden learned not to be "accident prone" after his death. He knew Shane had been mercilessly beaten those first three years he'd known him after being orphaned. Then there was Nora, a pure thing Shane had loved more than anything, ripped away, only to die a few weeks later without ever getting a proper goodbye between them. Shane had never let his guard down, in all that time, all the years Rick had known him. Even the recent loss of his Grandma Jean, who Rick knew Shane had loved like a mother and a friend, Shane having told him she was the only family member who he'd really ever felt akin to, hadn't made Shane's strength waver.

  
Rick wondered sometimes if he knew Shane at all, or if that unknowable quality was wherein the truest form of his friend lied. Either way, in the back of his mind, Rick knew he'd miss him if the tryout in Cleveland was successful for Shane, though he wished him the chance at some real success and happiness. There was a spring back in Shane's step, since that scout had seen him pitching, and had given him that stupid cap. Spearman was dying, drowning in dust, and Shane for all his strength, stood to suffer the most; watching everyone else leave or die before he'd ever let go. Rick knew Shane's only chance was to get out, and though he'd miss him, he hoped it worked out.

  
Besides, Rick's life was about to change profoundly too. He'd need Shane less in the future. It was time to square himself with preparing to let his oldest friend go. He watched Shane walk into the haze of the dusty distance, considering who he'd ask for favors like this one, once Shane was the pitcher for the Cleveland Indians.

  
In the meantime, Rick had another concern plaguing his mind. His Detective Special, a snub-nosed version of the Colt Police Positive that he'd been issued by the department, had gone missing from beneath the floor board where he kept it hidden.


	2. Hell is Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick leaves for Parryton with a sense of foreboding about the meaning of 'anomalous in nature', after recalling a strange conversation he had with someone many years ago. He must uncomfortably leave Lori behind, disappointed and distant.

Rick took the reins of his horse and led her towards the house, or rather, she lead him, as he trudged, heavy footed alongside her. He was filled with dread. Until yesterday, when he'd found out the department's car was plumb out of gas, he'd been looking forward to the trip with Lori. Now he felt a sense of troubled foreboding.

  
Even the subject matter of the meeting in Parryton had seemed like an intriguing case; something to break the monotony of the petty crimes and misdemeanors that Spearman generally saw. Mainly, the Sheriff here was a mediator of disputes. "Anomalous in nature" had suggested something remotely exhilarating. Now, replaying the conversation in his head, Rick got the chills. Babylon. He didn't even like the name, couldn't understand what kind of Texan would tempt The Lord like that. Sounded like the end times, not that he knew anything about that. Knew one thing was certain; wasn't a person alive who'd put themselves through being the whore there.

  
Not a religious man, he'd had his cards read, as a lark, at a fair that passed through, years past. The pale young woman who had foretold his fate had told him she couldn't see his end. In youthful folly, he'd laughed and suggested that was a good sign. The girl had only blanched a shade whiter, and looked back towards a drawn black lace curtain towards the back of her wagon, before asking him urgently to leave. The last thing she'd said, as she slammed the door in his face, was, "I didn't say you don't have an end. I only told you that I can't see it. The lake of fire is purification. Hell is darkness." In that moment, Rick had lost all interest in any knowledge of the future. He shuddered in the heat of the day, before stepping up onto the veranda and opening the weathered front door of his house.

  
"Lori?", he called out, as he walked into the kitchen. His wife stood hunched over the sink, in a faded yellow calico dress, her long dark hair tied loosely, scrubbing some of the tough rhubarb that she'd managed to keep alive in the garden.

  
She didn't turn, just absently answered, "Hmm?"

  
"Lori, I reckon it's gettin' time for me to go. I got some ground to cover.", Rick said hesitantly, coming up cautiously behind her. "I am real sorry about th'car. I was lookin' forward to gettin' away with you."

  
"Yeah, me too.", Lori answered back after a painfully long pause, turning around slowly, a weak smile finally forced onto her lips.

  
Lori knew her husband didn't really believe her, but she was telling the truth. She had been excited. She'd felt like a balloon someone had taken a pin to, when he'd told her it was off. She hadn't realized just how bored she'd become until that moment; that her heart could break over the loss of a two day long outing. No one treated boredom as though it were a malady that mattered, but she'd suffered it acute and chronic for so long that she knew how it could destroy and erode a person. Her life was an eternal cycle of the same things, until one day was the next, and years went by a few excruciating minutes at a time. How her life was flying by, just passing her by, and yet every passing second was something she strained at to have finished, was a mystery to her. In this fog of monotony, she'd lost something profound: herself. Everything she'd ever been, or wanted to be, was gone. She had taunting mementos left; old pictures, dresses, books she used to think she understood when she read them, even her own face. They reminded her of an idea of herself that she used to have, that seemed so far removed that it was like a story someone had told her about another person.

  
Losing her identity had been a death, and a loss no one else saw. She'd grieved all alone for the person she'd been closest to since birth. Lori knew Rick worried that he was the cause, and that she knew, and blamed him. She didn't though, realizing that she hadn't been trampled; she had been desiccated by routine until she'd become complacent, and finally withered away. She wished she felt like a ghost, a shadow of her former self; any of those cliches she'd heard. She felt like something quite different; a lifeless body waiting to die. She made no illusions with herself anymore. She'd given up her ghost a long time ago.

  
Seeing her, sort of slumped from the inside, her face vacant, Rick reached over and rubbed her shoulder. He'd tried every way to comfort her, but the only time she showed any real mettle anymore was at those moments, resisting all his efforts. She was suddenly wiry beneath his touch, and he could feel every fiber of her pulling away.

  
"Look, Lori, I am really sorry about this. I won't be gone long, 'an you're gonna be fine. Saw Shane this morning, an' he'll be by every day to check on you, and anything needs done, you just tell him. He'll get it done."

  
Tears stung Lori's eyes, as Rick pulled her close and hugged her, and her body wilted in his arms, as she relinquished her intransigence, and gave in.

  
"I'm not angry, Rick. And I'm not scared either, not really.", Lori said finally, "I just wish I was comin', is all."

  
"I wish you were too, baby. But trying to ride all that way in your condition?", Rick answered, just thankful she'd let him hold her. "I'm worried about you, Lori.", he said, pulling back to look in her eyes. She didn't blink. She never did.

  
Her condition. Lori wished he wouldn't remind her. She put it out of her mind, hoping it would leave her body. There had been a time when it was all she wanted, but now it seemed to turn a life of psychic incarceration from a harsh sentence into death row. It was so early. There was a doctor in Parryton. Now it would be left to fate, a force she no longer trusted. Late in the night, lying awake, in that irrational trance of insomnia, she wondered what the product of a womb in a lifeless woman would be. She had terrible dreams of dead gnarled trees folding like paper ahead of a wall of wind and fire that lit the whole sky before blackening it, and of limbless, scarred creatures who bled blue blood. She blamed herself for all of it, springing from the bed to kneel and pray fervently in words she didn't know the meaning of.

  
She shuddered, before recovering to smile faintly, and gently rub her hand over the secret in her still flat belly. "Don't worry, Rick. It's a couple of days. Besides, I'm not alone."

  
"That's my girl.", Rick said, smiling back. "You reckon we can tell folks once I'm back?"

  
"We'll see.", Lori answered, head cocked, and a smile that showed her teeth. Rick thought she looked a little like the woman he met back in Abilene. "I know you're chafin' at the bit, baby, but I just want to be sure. A little more sure anyway."

  
"Nah, I get it Lori. I do. I'm just excited." Rick said, finally breaking their embrace. "You know we gotta tell Shane before he leaves for Cleveland, in case he's not back in a long while."

  
"You really think he's going to make the team?", Lori asked. It was a legitimate question. She had no interest in sports and had no idea if Shane was actually any good or not.

  
"Ah, who knows. He's got an arm on him, though, an' I know he wants it.", Rick answered with a grin. "If he can convince 'em to think he's anywhere near as good as he thinks he is, I think he's got a real good shot."

  
"Well, boy's not short on confidence. Not short on much except maybe money.", Lori said, finally laughing.

  
Rick was glad to see Lori relaxed a little, smiling and laughing, though he always questioned the authenticity of it these days. Even so, now was the right time to run the credits and draw the curtain.

  
"Well, just make sure he's not short on shit to do. You don't need to be killin' yourself working around here. Sit on the porch and have a grape Nehi, an' let him tend the animals, do anything else you think needs done, alright?"

  
"Okay. I might do a little painting in the house, start with the doors. All the wind. It seems like the grit is wearing everything down.", Lori answered back, following Rick toward the front door. "You already got Milly loaded up with everything you need?"

  
"I think so.", Rick said, considering again his missing sidearm. "Actually, I might take along Shane's Ithaca. He's got an extra anyway.", he said suddenly, seeing the short barrel shotgun, which he'd borrowed to deal with a coyote problem the month prior, laying on the floor by the door. "Meant to give this back t'him today. I keep forgettin'. Let him I know I took it along when he's by, alright?"

  
"I'm not kissin' you holdin' that thing.", Lori said flatly, shaking her head. "So you better just say your goodbyes to me first, Rick Grimes."

  
Rick laughed. "Alright.", he answered, pulling her close and kissing her one more time. "I love you, Lori."

  
"Love you too, Rick.", she answered, standing stiffly at the door, watching her husband stoop to retrieve the gun from the floor. "Take care, alright?"

  
"I will.", Rick answered, sneaking a kiss to her forehead past her. "Be back Thursday mornin'. Time's gonna fly. I'll bring you a present."

  
"Go on then. I know it's not long.", Lori said smiling, but her tone a little terse. "Love you.", she added, standing in the doorway as he descended the stairs of the veranda.

  
"Love you too.", Rick yelled back to her, taking his hat off and waving to her before mounting his horse, and riding away, kicking up dust.

  
Lori stood in the doorway and watched Rick ride away until she couldn't see him anymore. Here on the plain, it took a long time, the earth so flat you could almost see its curvature, so broad and open. She liked hearing about Georgia from Shane. She doubted she'd ever see it the way things were now, but it sounded treacherous and exciting. Romantic. The way the trees closed in all around, tall and lush, overgrown in kudzu vine, or draped in the spectres of grey Spanish moss, humid with heavy vapor that hung in the breathless night like ghosts. Shane had once told them of the high anxiety all the space surrounding him had made him feel as a boy when he'd first come here, how he'd looked all around for shelter and seen none. He said he'd had vertigo anytime he'd stepped outside for the first few weeks. She understood that now, though she hadn't at the time. Emptiness could swallow you as easily as shadows.

  
The last thing she'd seen was the top of Rick's hat, as the haze of dust on the horizon had overtaken that at last too. Lori sighed, and as she turned to go back inside, thinking of what to do with that tough, stringy rhubarb, she ran her fingers over the front door, her fingernails catching and pulling loose blisters of the cracked, curled paint. She felt a quickening. She didn't want to can today. She felt like painting that front door. It was the entrance to their home; the first and last thing that they or anybody else saw of them. She didn't want it weather-beaten, faded and peeled. Wasn't any kind of a first or last impression, and no kind of a start to anything.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a shorter chapter, but needed to stand alone. For anyone missing Shane (I know I did!), rest assured, he will feature prominently in the next chapter. I know Carnivale isn't represented by a large fandom, but for any of its readers, as I assured TWD fans last chapter that they won't be left in the dark at all by this crossover, neither will anyone reading for Carnivale, and I promise the appearance of the characters tagged eventually, and then some. I don't want to ruin any surprises though.


	3. Romans 1:18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane heads into Spearman to check in on Leon at the Sheriff's Department, and is less than heartened by the less than forthcoming response he gets when he asks questions about the suspect who seems to require a state-wide task force. Later on, opening his general store for the day, he comes face to face with a cryptic man that may be the unfortunate creature all those guns held in the long arm of the Texas law are pointed at. 
> 
> For anyone interested, there is a playlist that provides atmosphere and sort of defines the feels for this story... one of my irl friends, and you know who you are, I finally got around to doing this up for you! It can be found on YouTube if you search "Drowning in Dust Official Soundtrack" (Yes, that's supposed to be mildly funny, no, the account is not my real name! LOL). It's not a bunch of dopey mopey pop songs or anything like that. Just atmosphere meant to play as a backdrop. Okay, so maybe just a little anachronism, but mood transcends time.

There was something about the way Leon Bassett wore the uniform. For one thing, unlike Shane, he actually wore the uniform. Shane just pinned his star to whatever it was he was wearing. In his estimation, that was the difference between a policeman and a lawman, assuming the likes of Bat Masterson probably took the liberty of plain clothes. Shane comfortably took the liberty too, especially now, with his tryout rapidly approaching. But Leon; the way he wore his uniform, starched, and the collar shinied up by excessive ironing, just to sit around a neck too thin to fill it. He looked ridiculous. Shane thought the phrase "kid in his father's suit" was trite, and not nearly absurd enough. Leon wore the uniform like a Drunkard's Cloak; like the village disgrace walking the thoroughfare in a suspendered barrel. He reminded Shane of a carnivale hoax he'd paid a nickel to see a few years ago called Turtle Boy; a baby doll glued inside a real turtle shell, floating in a dirty little aquarium.

 

The most annoying thing about it all to Shane though, was that despite his stubborn adherence to all the rules, and disdain for anyone who didn't, Leon wasn't a good cop, nor a particularly good person. Shane thought of the sermon his Grandma Jean used to preach about legalists and rule followers. She'd taught him that Saint Paul himself said they had a weak conscience. As a boy, he'd had a hard time making sense of that, or The Word written on your heart stuff, but now he felt like he grasped its fringe. The law was fulfilled. Why strain at gnats? Shane found his swagger in feeling insignificant. There was a freedom to that. People who still thought they could matter would never be free.

 

Pushing the door to the station open, Shane heard the ding of the bell that hung above. There he was, Turtle Boy, daubing an open file on the desk with a rag, an upset mug inches away telling the rest of that story.

 

"Y'know, I think when Rick said it'd be good for y'to clear a case every so often, he had somethin' else in, mind, Bassett."

 

"Piss off, Walsh.", Leon sneered. "You ain't even on the schedule."

 

"Yeah, well, I won't keep y'long. Won't keep y'from your housekeeping duties. Believe me, I ain't stickin' around to see you in an apron. Just making sure everything's alright." Shane stood close to the desk now, arms crossed over his chest, intently watching the squirming little man, who was managing to be hot around a collar that sat an inch away from his neck on all sides. "How much d'you know about this task force thing in Parryton?"

 

"Nothin'. I mean, only that there's some guy, s'posed to be a real bad dude, might be in the state, or comin' this way." Leon answered uncomfortably. Shane detected it immediately.

 

"You got any idea what the phrase 'Anomalous in nature' might imply, huh, Bassett?', Shane asked, eyes narrowed. When Leon hesitated to answer, Shane kicked the metal leg of the desk abruptly. "How about y'just unburden yourself. Confession feels good, an' some men just ain't born to carry water. So why don't you just spill it an' let me sort it out?"

 

Leon, started, gasping and jumping like a cat with shot nerves when Shane kicked the desk. He stammered now under Shane's gaze. Leon was filled with a hatred for Shane that could only really be contrived in fear and weakness, a peevish lashing out of pathetic jealousy for a man whose experience in life he could never appreciate. Leon would never see in Shane any pain or difficulty, only a man who could be more than he could ever be, and Leon hated him bitterly for it. Leon knew one thing; a rumor about a curious drop of blood found inside the death mask of a man who was dead many times over, and a carnivale that had abandoned the circuit years in a row, seeming to be harbingers of this man, leading ahead, or following behind, but always rumored to be seeking him in some tense. And deaths. Deaths strange and macabre, were said to abound. Leon was fond of listening in to Rick's phone calls since he'd become Sheriff, and had heard that some of these deaths had looked to have been caused by their own victims, though not quite consistent with suicide either, as though their hands had been directed.

 

A spiteful desire filled Leon, and he decided in that moment to jealously hoard the meager information he did have about the case.

"Not a damned thing, Walsh.", Leon spat back with more fury than a true denial ever needed. Shane could tell there wasn't a thing for it, if he wasn't going to beat the shit out of him, and he doubted it was anything worth the wrath that would bring down on him.

 

"Well, I guess that's why they call, 'What the hell good are y'to me then?', a rhetorical question, ain't it, huh?", Shane said, easing back from the desk with a curt, uneasy laugh. He didn't like being lied to, but this chase was over.

 

"And what the hell good are you to this department? Why don't you go tend y'er counter?", Leon asked, falling short of a sneer and coming across more a petulant child, spoiled way too often. "How'd you even get into town today without Rick t'pick you up in the flatty?"

 

"Ah, c'mon, Leon. That's just sad. Nice try though, man, really. I know you're a trigger an' a wheel shy of makin' a revolver, but hell. No need to embarrass yourself on my account. Not that I don't enjoy it.", Shane laughed. "I got horses. You know that, man. An' beyond that, I got Shanks' Pony, an' most the time that suits me just fine. Y' should try it sometime. Maybe some manual labor. Might not have those skinny limbs and be gettin' fat around the middle." Shane was already halfway out the door when he turned back to add, "An' I reckon I will tend my counter. Feel free t'come in, sign your pay on over to me for the tab y'alls family owes me. Do that for the next six months, y'might be close to bein' free an' clear." Just far enough out the door that it would slam shut and ding that stupid bell before Leon could reply, Shane added under his breath loud enough for Leon to hear, "Nothin' worse than a high falutin' deadbeat. 'Cept a whole fuckin' family of 'em."

 

Alone in the quiet station, Leon Bassett marveled at the pulse that hammered in his head, not understanding why, staring through dark veiled sight at the pale mint green walls. His face burned hot, and a regret he couldn't explain filled him with dread, as a verse in a slow, deep voice filled his head, repeating over and over, "Pride goeth before a fall."

 

After a quick walk a few blocks down the dusty streets, Shane let himself into the back of Walsh Sundry. It had been nearly a year now that he'd been running the store alone. Almost a year that he'd avoided that pallet covered in a heavy canvas tarp, set a little too close to the back door, and in a location utterly inconvenient for use of the loading bay. Almost a year and he still hadn't touched the thing, avoiding tripping over it by avoiding looking at it, by way of generally avoiding the back of his own store. He'd felt self conscious to pack it up and cover it even if it were to be known only to his beloved Grandma Jean. But the day he'd started facing that order, the Everly's last order, that had never been picked up, alone, without ol' Jean the Machine there, he'd moved the pallet close to the back and covered it, planning to take it out and discard it at the county dump. But somehow that was too hard too. Shane hurried past it, shoving aside the saloon style doors that led out to the floor.

 

Shane didn't expect to even see a customer this morning. Most people called orders in or dropped a list off for him to fill, and since he had no pick ups today, his expectations for any business were low. Once he was out of the back, his pace slowed, and he meandered up the aisle, checking his inventory as he went. So much had changed. The things he needed to order, the things he sold; none were the same as before the drought had hit. Auto part and tire sales, which not long ago had been a burgeoning business, had all but died off. He sold more feed and tack for horses now. Radios sold like crazy. He was expecting another order of those in later in the week, and had them all spoken for. Since getting hired on as a Deputy, he'd also managed to secure a liquor license. He was making good money on that. Seemed everyone drank these days. Guns sold. So did cheap pine coffins.

 

As he'd made his way closer to the front of the store, and stepped behind the counter to make account of the cash box from the day earlier, Shane felt a weight on him; a sort of pressure and discomfort. He felt like his head was ringing in a pitch he couldn't quite hear. The day seemed dark though it had grown bright and sunny. Shane rubbed his eyes hard with his hand, leaning against the countertop. Slowly a recognition dawned on him that he was in a shadow. A man, casting a shadow ten times as long as it ought to have been, stood at the front door silently, waiting to be let in.

 

In long strides, Shane headed to open the front door. Dressed in a brown striped suit and hat, the man was older, yet somehow not very aged, his skin tight. Long wisps of grey hair fell to his shoulders from under his hat. He was tall and thin, but his shadow was distinctly too long, Shane felt, for his height. The man's face was keen and pinched, his eyes wide but barely more than slits. To Shane, they seemed so pale as to be nearly colorless.

 

"Sorry; didn't see you there.", Shane commented simply, opening the door and letting the man inside. The bell above that door tolled too. Shane had considered it before; that sometimes he felt like a conditioned dog. Hear a stupid fuckin' bell, start working.

 

  
"I reckon you saw me when I wanted you to.", the man answered back, genial. Shane wanted to ask what the hell that kind of cryptic shit was about, but a still malice hung stifling in the atmosphere, and instead, Shane hurried briskly back behind the counter, where one of his hands found the reassuring diamond grip of a warm wood handle.

 

"Hey, uh, sir?", he asked the man, who was slowly walking around, looking at everything too long to have real business here, "Anything I can help y'with? You here for somethin' in particular?"

  
Shane eyeballed him closely. He hadn't liked the way the man's backbone had stiffened the moment Shane's hand had landed on his gun.

  
"Well.", the man answered back slowly, turning to face Shane slowly, and walking very deliberately toward him, "Since you ask, there is. Sulfuric acid, and vinegar. See you got the vinegar."

  
Shane leaned forward, his hand on a gun manufactured to be whipped out, narrowing his eyes, brows furrowed and raised to nearly meet his low hairline. "I think you ought to be goin'." Shane said bluntly. "See, to me, that's an evil order. Full of th'kind of evil shit I don't like thinkin' about. An' once again, people bore me.", Shane added, letting the man hear him pull the hammer back on his weapon. "Jus' 'cause you're bad, don' mean you're smart. See, y'all always think it does. But I ain't nothin' but a dropped out shopkeep, 'an I know you can't neutralize sulfuric acid with vinegar. Lye, you fuckin' moron. Lye's a base. You can neutralize it with vinegar. Soda's what you need for acid. Somethin' alkaline."

  
The man seemed unconcerned with the weapon trained on him from beneath the counter, and continued putting one foot ahead of the other, slithering like a snake before the fall.

  
Shane's heart pounded, but he didn't bow, didn't break his stare. He didn't like looking the man in the eyes, but he did it anyway.

  
The man laughed, a smug chortle that echoed through the quiet store. "Oh, you're a real clever one, what was it she used to call you?", he asked softly. "Stonewall? Well, thanks, then. I guess I got what I needed, unless you really do sell sulfuric acid? I'll still take the vinegar.", the man mocked now, leaning closer to Shane across the counter. He'd seen the creep travel down Shane's back, and a look of anguished recognition when he'd made his guess. "And a map with the way to Babylon, please."

  
"Think it's better if I don't.", Shane answered plainly, "I'm a duly deputized member of th' Sheriff's Department, in case y'didn't notice. An' I got a twelve gauge Ithaca Auto an' Burglar trained on you, that I can only assure you, I'm good with. Better with two, but that's just a preference for style. You'll get dead either way. So I suggest you move on, sir."

  
"Business so good for you here, things as they are, that you can afford to turn down money?", the man answered back, unfazed, but surprised by Shane's hostile resistance.

  
"Best part of self employment's havin' no boss. Worst part? Every fuckin' hump with a dollar thinks they are.", Shane replied, steady, lashed with fatigue. He pointed to a faded, hand-painted sign on the wall. "I reserve the right to refuse service. To anyone, or anything, as the case may be.", he added, unconcerned with how unhinged that statement sounded. Somehow, he knew the man wouldn't flinch.

  
"And why would you do that?"

  
"B'cause. I don't like your eyes. I don't like all the things I don't see in 'em.", Shane said calmly, finally whipping his gun out into the open and training it on the man's face. "Remind me of a coyote's."

  
"You're a man filled with anger.", the old man answered back, a cloying, rational tone in his voice. "It's gonna make you sick. Not good for a person. Now why don't you just sell me what you've got, and I'll be on my way?"

  
Shane locked his elbow, his thick arm, strong with years of toil, holding the gun steady, not but inches from the man's face. His dark eyes didn't blink, and he thought he saw a glimmer of doubt in the colorless slits that had been staring him down so emotionless.

  
"Oh, I think you mistake me.", Shane finally spoke, voice filled with authority, loud and even. "I ain't filled with anger. That's a pussy's emotion. Somethin' you probably feel. See, me? I'm filled with wrath, for the Wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men."

  
Shane hadn't even seen it happen, but by the time he'd finished speaking, the man had retreated backwards, never breaking his stare with Shane, and once Shane was silent, the bell at the door was dinging again. As the heavy front door slammed shut in its frame, Shane stood leaden in place, his gun still trained on the door.

  
Once alone, Shane strongly wished he'd have tried out the name Hack on the man, and saw what his reaction would be. Problem was, he'd wanted to try some other names on him too, that he didn't make a habit of speaking.

  
Shane didn't replace his gun to its spot under the counter. He carried it with him to lock the front door and step outside. The man was gone, no sight of him to be seen. Shane decided that what he really needed to do today was to go be with Lori. She shouldn't be alone on that farm with a guy like that at large. It was more important to protect her than chase after a man without a warrant. A task force was coming and besides, he was headed to Babylon. Babylon was so undermined it had become almost an underworld. The residents there could deal with Hack Scudder.

 

 


	4. Cottonwood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane and Lori are both moved.

There were plenty of times in Shane's life that he'd wondered why he'd done a thing, but this was something different altogether. The chill that had spread like cold fingers down each length of his spine lingered, though his face burned hot with the shame. He had felt nothing but an urge to get out of town and get over to Rick and Lori's for the first half mile or so, but then thoughts started to seep once again into his mind, like a few sparse rain drops seeking for a crack in the pale, parched earth in which to be slowly consumed. Shane still felt unsure how lucid he was.

  
He'd felt as though he'd woken from a fever dream, on the road, kicking up desolate dust in this moonscape, swinging his recently banned Ithaca in his hand still. He'd looked down at his own arm as if it were not his own, before realizing that it was his mind that might not have been.

  
He'd felt so in control, training his gun on the man's face, refusing service, and yet he interrogated himself now, searching his motives. Why had he corrected him, explained to him how to stop the chemical reactions? That was stupid. He'd just been thrown off by the order; sulfur, the element of hell, the scent of fire and brimstone, and vinegar, offered by the scoffers and mockers to the suffering Christ. He didn't figure a man could put forth an order more nefarious sounding, more unimaginably evil. He was somehow trying to change the words, erase it so that someday he could forget it, but instead, now he worried he'd told the man exactly what he'd been looking for. Shane couldn't understand why he hadn't demanded a name, why he hadn't detained him, why he hadn't followed him, why he hadn't went to the station to file a report. One foot ahead of the other, in his patched boots, and he had to ask himself, even now, why exactly it was he was still walking dead to check on Lori, when he had a very strong sense the man had went the other direction.

  
Lori stood on the front veranda of her home, door flung wide open, not even attempting to keep out the grit or the heat. She'd thrown her hair in a loose braid to keep it from blowing in her eyes, though it couldn't have been any more distracting than all the dust and fine flakes of paint that the wind had her blinking away, and wiping her eyes with her sleeve, as she ferociously scraped the huge front door, sweat from her hairline leaving trails on her brow and cheeks in the grime on her skin. The yard had been circled round with a shelterbelt of young poplar trees when she'd married Rick. Hardy as they were, they were all dead now, clothed in their crude bark, creased and cracked like the earth. They stood like rough hewn gallows hung with naught but skeletons; a perch for the vultures. She'd grown afraid of them in the dark.

  
She'd suddenly wanted to do this task, and as soon as she'd lost sight of Rick, she'd changed into a pair of his overalls and gone out to the shed to get the scraper, and see what they had left by way of paint. It wasn't much, but she supposed she'd just mix it all together and whatever color she ended up with would be fine. Lori had smiled at that. The entry to their home being the color of the composite of the history of their lives together. Lives together. It was supposed to be life together. Her smile had faded, nothing but a serene sadness left behind in its wake.

  
Staring at the greyed grain of the wood, slowly revealing itself as she dug the metal blade into the generations of cracked paint layered on top one another, Lori felt a sense of real satisfaction seeing it stripped away, the door coming clean. Seemed a real good analogy for her own self; painted over in different colors so many times that she didn't remember what there was under all of the coats.

  
Lori tried; she really did. Even now, kneeling on the wide slats of the veranda to scrape the bottom of the door, she thought of Rick. She knew he was hurting, but she knew he was happy too, and that annoyed her because she wasn't. He had been struting around with that distant, pleased smile, looking placid, for the past couple of months now. Sure, he hovered, looking at her with that galling, oppressive concern all the time too. But then she felt an awful physical pain in her chest just thinking about him and his anxious, patient doting. She'd cry sometimes thinking about him, going to work, looking after everything, day in and day out, waiting for her to be happy again; waiting for her to be happy with him again. Shane had told them about The Waving Girl; a legend in Savannah. Her lover had gone to sea by way of the Savannah River, and never returned to her. The girl had lost her mind, returning to the banks, day after day, until she'd died waiting. Now she haunted the banks, doomed to stand waving goodbye for all eternity. That wasn't what she wanted for Rick.

  
Lori cursed herself for her inability to give him what he wanted, trying to talk herself back into love with him. But it always led to her wondering why he never seemed to think; just walked around looking placid and stupid. She wondered when he'd become so easy to hate. She thought she remembered loving him once, but lost the trail of breadcrumbs every time she tried to find her way back. And what was hate anyway, if not just love; love taken and starved, abused, neglected and ignored. Of course she still loved him. He was the most lovable person she'd ever known.

  
She hadn't noticed Shane walking up the lane until she heard his footfalls on the wooden steps up to the house.

  
Shane had seen her though; it had seemed to him that she was the saddest thing he'd ever laid his eyes on. She just seemed bent under a yoke that no one saw, and Shane was struck by the contrast between the girl Rick had introduced him to years earlier, and the faded avatar that now knelt windburned on the veranda, with a look so anguished, but not meant for anyone to see.

  
The first time Shane was introduced, her skin was the alabaster of the aristocracy, her dark hair had been cut short and angular, she'd worn a brass ring around her head, decorated with pastestones, and had dark red lips on. Shane, at the time, had been imprisoned in a numb grief, having recently learned of Nora's death, and so he hadn't seen any beauty in Lori. He saw no beauty in anything at that time. But today, even dressed in Rick's overalls, hair full of paint, windblown and dirty, he finally saw what he thought Rick must have. The only thing was, that he felt like he saw the invisible pillory of grief that she was now trapped in, seeing no hope in this declining world.

  
"Hey, Lori.", he greeted her gently. "You fixin' to paint today?"

  
She flinched a little in surprise at his presence, before looking up at him and slowing down her scraping. "Thought I might, yeah, Shane. I was planning on canning that rhubarb, but I'm not sure it warrants the use of the sugar."

  
"You kiddin'?", Shane smiled, determined to try to say something that would make her feel better, "Th'stuff's amazin'. Never had it until I moved out here. Tell, y'what. Why don't you hand me the scraper an' let me do this for you, and you do up your canning? I'll pack some ice cream from the icebox at the store up in straw, an' we can have some like that at supper time. What'cha say?"

  
"Rick put you up to this, didn't he?", Lori asked skeptically, a feeble smile barely visible on her face. "I'm fine. Don't you have things of your own to do?"

  
Shane knelt down, taking the scraper from her clenched fist gently. "Nah, y'know, I don't. Seems Rick thinks we both need a babysitter. Leon's got the station, an' t'be honest, I know I got no business today."

  
He didn't tell her that between making the mistake of coming in through the back and walking past the Everly's eternally unclaimed pallet, and the strange conversation with the empty eyed man, he wanted nothing to do with spending the day alone in his store.

  
"I don't think Rick thinks that of you at all.", Lori replied, standing and looking down at Shane. He made scraping the paint from that door looks so easy. She sometimes thought life just looked like it went a little too easy on men. Anyone who ever wondered if God still blamed women for The Fall only had to watch a man and a woman do the same job. Or a birth. She cringed.

  
"No, I don't either.", Shane said, grinning up at her. He stopped short of finishing whatever quip he was about to make when he saw her shiver. "Y'alright, Lori?"

  
"Yeah, hunky dory." Lori had that deflection ready. "I just miss Rick's all. He wouldn't tell me anything about what was goin' on up there. It's the first time in a long time. It just has me worried."

  
"Yeah, well, don't feel too bad. I'm a deputy, an' he wouldn't tell me a thing. S'pose he has his reasons. I reckon he spills when he gets home, if it comes to anything. Went by the station t'day, an' it seemed like that shifty coc-", he paused thinking, "Fu-...", Shane paused again, this time looking up at Lori's face. "Sonofa-". He saw a little smile forming, albeit against her will. "Mighty sorry about the language, Lori. Don't want to offend you, real lady an' all, just I don't have a whole lot of time for Bassett. Not Leon, not any of 'em. Owe me way too much money for me to find any charity for them. They took out that account in its whole, by way of being deadbeat bums in general, still struttin' around like King Shit."

  
Lori laughed, and it was surprising to both of them. It didn't bubble out of her, but rather sounded like someone's old weary knees creaking after hours of disuse. "No problem Shane. Truth be told, curse away. It'd be a relief to me." She paused this time, an easier smile crossing her face. "I agree. Leon is a cocksuckin' fucker and an incompetent sonofabitch. Man, that does feel good!", she laughed.

  
"Well, now we got that out of th' way, we can really talk.", Shane answered back, still grinning. "Rick doesn't think you need a babysitter either. You're just all that matters to him in the world. He wants to say you're scared to be alone, but I figure it's him who's more scared. Can't say I blame him."

"What do you mean by that?", Lori asked. She had a feeling she knew. Shane had lost so many people in his life.

  
"Ah, just that you lose sight of a thing, it can get lost, or you can." Shane's voice was still and low. "I worry leavin' the both of you when I go to Cleveland. Th' two of you are all I got left in this world. You two got people. I don't."

  
Lori stared back down at Shane from where she stood, one foot in the house and the other out, propped in the door frame. She was the first to confess the man knew how to spin a yarn, but she'd never considered Shane an interesting man; more a hoser from this podunk nightmare of a town, with the advantage of a few timeworn stories from a place she and Rick had never been, whose frayed and yellowed edges made them seem eerie and orphic. But now she regarded him with an almost morbid fascination, wondering how he'd endured what he had, and how much endurance the man had left in him. His eyes fixed ahead concentrating on the task his hands were doing, he had said what he'd said, expecting it to go unheard and unanswered. She felt a sudden understanding for the man. He carried things more graciously than she did; didn't mean he felt it any less.

  
It was then that their scruffy dog snuck in, pushing her head under Shane's arm, and begging for his attention.

  
"Hey, there, Garbo.", Shane said without missing a beat, giving her a pat on the head before going back to scraping the door.

  
"You say her name like it's actually her name. Rick still can't.", Lori said with a quick grin and squint to the horizon. "Stutters it out like it's a question every time."

  
"Deeds done.", Shane answered simply. "You know what I thought she oughta be called. Doubt Rick argued with you or made a suggestion. That's the difference. He wanted to call her Rags, y'know. He's hearin' all his arguments for why it shoulda' been, every time he has to call her Garbo."

  
"Yeah, I never knew that.", Lori answered back, far away and more to herself. Changing her tone, she asked more brightly, "You want a Nehi, Shane? I might just sit and have one myself."

  
"I'd be obliged, thanks.", Shane accepted. "Hey, knock when you need back out. I'm about ready to start on the other side of this door."

  
Lori gone inside to grab the sodas, Shane closed the heavy front door. Well made once upon a time, it was dehydrated and had been sanded down over the years every time the house had shifted to prevent it from creaking. Shane opened and closed it a couple of times, brow furrowed and his dark eyes judging. He didn't bother touching the scraper back to its surface.

  
When Lori returned and handed him two bottles, and one bottle opener, he cracked both caps and handed one bottle back to her, taking a swig before saying anything, leaning on the veranda rail.

  
"Y'know, Lori, I don't think this door's worth painting. It doesn't seal in the frame properly anymore, an' there's nothing you can do to fix that. I got a few new doors made up in the store in this size. I can bring one out and refit this. Keep the dust outta your house. Easier to paint too."

  
Lori took a sip from her bottle of soda, her hazel eyes fixed intently on Shane's face. She'd been ready to cut him off and refuse, tell him that the door they had was fine, and that they couldn't afford to pay him for it. But as a thin wisp of sediment drifted on a current of harsh wind blustering between them, and she felt its sting on her cheek, she saw the look cross Shane's face. It was fear, deep and heavy, and something so dense and opaque that he couldn't see through it. He looked lost in it. It seemed to her, he looked like he'd seen a ghost, until she realized it was something a shade different. Shane had looked in horror at her like she was already dead. Lori recognized at once that he was thinking of his grandmother, and watching her die slowly of dust pneumonia.

  
Lori set her bottle deliberately on the rail of the porch and laid a hand gently on Shane's arm.

  
"I'd be much obliged, Shane. I would, and I know Rick would be too. That would be lovely, thank you. How much do we owe you?", she'd answered him back softly.

  
"Nah. I won't take a dime from you for it. I can't sell what I have anyway, an' you two are family. You got paint for the job?", Shane asked, guzzling his grape soda and easing towards the stairs, anxious to get moving.

  
"We got a bunch of leftover dabs. I figured I'd just mix them all up. Should be enough that way.", Lori answered, squinting and smoothing an errant strand of hair that kept blowing across her face.

  
"No guarantee they mix up properly. An' that's not gonna be any kind of a color. Tell you what, I'll bring by some chips too. When I'm hanging the new door, y'can see what you like, huh? I think I still got some kind of home and garden catalogues or some shit from a couple years ago, back when the company reps still used to come out here. If you want, you could take a look. See what there is only a few years out of style?", Shane offered with a half grin from the bottom of the stairs, already pulling his cap down tight.

  
"That'd be real nice, Shane. I'd like that. As long as you don't consider it trouble."

  
Shane could hear an ease in her voice, and her brows seemed to sit a little higher on her forehead, a little further apart. He knew Rick never felt like he needed him, but Shane felt something akin to pride stir in his chest. Everyone needed other people sometimes, just Shane never called them on it. But acknowledged or no, he was determined to be helpful. He never thought he knew much, but women? Women he knew. They weren't so different than men. Sometimes they just needed to feel a sense of control over their own lives. Lori felt blown asunder, just cast on the winds and carried. Rick wanted to shelter her, but he didn't know how to protect her from the reality of being human; having a free will over your predestined life. Shane felt a strong sense that she'd got lost in the futility of knowing all stories end the same way, to the degree that she'd forgotten that all along the way, she was in control of how she arrived at her own funeral.

  
Already spun on his heel, and walking, he yelled back over his shoulder, "No trouble at all. Gotta stop by my place on the way, an' hitch the wagon up to ol' Braxton Bragg. Be back shortly."

  
Lori watched him go, a faint smile crossing her dry lips, as her hand shot up to cover it. "Hey Shane?", she hollered at the last possible moment for her voice to carry all the way to him, "You mind bringin' that ice cream too?"

  
Shane didn't turn or respond, and just kept walking, signalling his response with an exaggerated wave of his cap back towards her. If every life was but one thing really, a funeral, Shane wouldn't be late for his own. As long as he remembered, he'd laid tracks through his life as fast as he could. Shane was in no hurry to get there, or anywhere, most of the time, but it didn't matter. It wasn't in his nature to slow down. Maybe for him death wasn't a destination. Maybe it was more a cloud of topsoil. Maybe it was bearing down, waiting to overtake him if he ever slowed his pace.

 


	5. Pharaoh's Snake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane returns to Spearman to fetch the new door for the Grimes' home, and while there, decides to tell Leon about his troubling encounter with Scudder. Once at the station, he discovers that Leon has had an unusual encounter of his own.

 

Lori stood many long minutes on the porch after Shane had left her sight. She'd never had much of a sense of bearings, no internal compass, nor had she ever seen the ocean. She thought about that now, a cold regret rising up through her, like its tides that would never swallow her, lapping at her ankles and suddenly washing over her face, salty spray stinging her deep hazel eyes. She'd be planted in the earth, to return to the dust until she rose again in the end days. Landlocked for unknown and unnumbered years. How sad to be so too, for this temporal blink of an eye. She exhaled long and hard, forcing the breath from her lungs, feeling the rattle deep behind her bones, the needling inside her back behind her jutting shoulder blades, and tasting the familiar metallic breath that wheezed from her body more and more. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. She wasn't aware of the tears burning down her face, nor the half bottle of grape soda that slipped from her hand, spilling down the sagged veranda, as she walked inside the house to lay down on her bed.

His body going through the motions of his work, hitching up the cart in the heat and driving into town, Shane's mind too had been at odds with itself. His jaw twitched with tension, the soft-with-wear leather reins circled round his tanned hands so tight that his fingers had grown cold and numb, even as the parched, cracked dirt seemed to radiate more heat than the sun, silver phantom waves rising from the road ahead. Shane was still filled with an unfamiliar sense of shame and a desire to hide in regards to the run-in with the man earlier. He wanted to go to the station and ask Leon if anything strange had been reported, maybe even confess himself--that he was pretty sure he'd seen Scudder, and pretty sure he'd let the man go after answering all of his questions without even making him ask them. He needed to tell that idiot Bassett he was sure of one thing: that the man was dangerous as a pit viper. Shane physically flinched like he'd been slapped at that thought. Even a humble man didn't enjoy his head in the dirt.

Holding his horse back, as it slowly trod up the dirt road main drag of town, Shane glanced at all the storefronts, faded candy colored slant roof shanties with hand-painted names in the windows. The faces that looked out seemed to fade into to the background like apparitions, expressions desperate. The people here were desperate, and desperate for anything; rain, customers, money, hope, even a full tank of gas to carry them away from this hellscape. Shane's posture fell, as he clicked the reins. He had to talk to Leon. No way around it. No way around having your head in the dirt in fucking Spearman.

Shane's body was sturdy, heavy muscled with years of hard use, strong like a clydesdale. But he strove to take the steps onto the narrow wooden sidewalk that they still had on this block of town, and to pull open the door of the Sheriff's Department, as though he was walking uphill in fine sand. When the bell rang to announce his arrival, he thought of something quite different. Bells rang for the dead. The station felt cool, but Shane felt sweat break out under his thick hair, and thick beads running uncomfortably down his sides as his pulse quickened. The air smelled all wrong, acrid like burnt flesh to false gods.

"Bassett? You around?", Shane barked out urgently, before noticing the white haired man in the brown suit sitting silently in a chair at Leon's desk, back turned to Shane.

"Well. If it isn't Pharaoh's Snake.", the man chided without turning.

"You doggin' my steps, huh, asshole?" Or should I just call you Hack? Hear it's what y'go by.", Shane said, feeling an adrenaline filled boldness take him over. Before he could take the stride toward the man that he planned to, the man spun around in his chair.

"Seems to me, it's you following me. Nothing new. Most people do. Follow me, I mean. Never catch me."

The man spoke slow, voice in a minor key. Shane hadn't heard a minor key in years, not around here, on account the preacher man in town here said it was the key of the devil. Shane hadn't heard a minor note that he recalled, in fact, since being a boy in Georgia, stumbling across one of the gypsy caravans from Augusta, hearing their haunting music played around a campfire. It was pretty, but he'd felt afraid, unable to move. They'd had a huge pet bear chained up with heavy links to the biggest wagon.

Shane resisted an urge to beak. He didn't want to tell this man anything he didn't already know.

"I work here. I've got business here. Where's Bassett?", Shane responded back calmly, barely hearing his words over his pulse.

"What do you care anyway?", Scudder asked slowly, amused, fingering one of his cuff links. "You can't stand the man."

"Ah, I stand just fine.", Shane shot back, letting his right hand drop onto his holstered gun, thumbing the snap lose. "Man's a cop like me. Where is he?"

"You're way too much fun to play with, Stonewall." Scudder laughed, a deep hiss, his colorless eyes darting in their wide slits, finally digging into Shane's eyes. "You win.", he exhaled, with a shrug, looking bored. "Leon? He's been skimming on the job since prohibition. Was going to get him to pay you back for the tab he and his kin owe you, for the help you gave me, if you had the balls to take it. Should all be there. What was it, again? Nineteen forty five", the man stood from his chair slowly, walking past Shane, who stood stiff as a statue, "hmm... seven and sixteen. Twenty three, was it? That was it, wasn't it, Shane? Nineteen hundred and forty five dollars and twenty three cents?", he asked mockingly, before slipping out the door.

He didn't know how, but Shane urgently felt he needed to get to the back of the station. As he hurried in long strides past the enameled metal desk, and into the back hall, he thought he heard rustling in the one cell they had in the very back. His dread hadn't left when Henry Scudder had. He picked up his pace and ran over the waxed asbestos tile floor, hand still on his gun.

When he stepped around the corner at the end of the hall to face the cell, Leon Bassett stood on a chair, pale as a ghost, slick with cold sweat. His eyes were glazed, not seeming to see Shane at all. He'd pulled some of the insulated wiring Shane had used to install the lights from off the wall somewhere, and had it tied like a noose around that ridiculous thin neck of his , and slung over a ceiling beam. As Shane fumbled through the keys that hung on a ring by the cell door, Leon stepped blankly off the chair. There wasn't a neck on earth so thin that a noose didn't fit.

"Leon, don't you...", Shane yelled out, too late, just as he got the right key in the door, heaving it open and charging inside.

Without time for a thought, he grabbed Leon's legs, wrapping his arms around his knees, and lifting him up. Kicking awkwardly at the floor, his patched boot seeking for the overturned chair until a toe found it, pulled it near where he could reach down, and prop it up. Shane climbed atop it, still balancing Leon's life with an awkward bear hug grip around his knees, before letting the other man's feet come to rest on the chair again, as he wrestled against time to undo the knot that was slowly choking the life from a man he'd just talked to that morning.

"C'mon.", Shane growled, spitting through gritted teeth, yanking hard on the wiring, trying to sort one end out from the other, as he watched Leon turning blue, his tongue starting to appear from behind his teeth, swollen, eyes increasingly filled with blood. The chair wobbled with one short leg under his feet. He hated that feeling; an unsure footing. Finally he got the knot loose, his arms numb and barely able to help Leon's limp body to the floor after the effort.

Pulling free the improvised noose, Shane knelt by Leon's side, slapping his face.

"Hey? Hey, man, you gotta breathe. Take a breath, motherfucker. You don't, who's gonna be a pain in my ass every day around here, huh?"

Leon didn't answer, his eyes didn't open, until suddenly they flew open and he drew in a huge gasp of breath. Shane sat there on the floor, his own chest on fire and a red pulse flashing in his eyes. He watched Leon strive to breathe while the color came slowly back into him, as his blood turned back from blue to red.

Shane felt two sides of his will at war with one another once again. He didn't want to give place to Scudder, didn't want to demonstrate one seed of faith in the man's prognostications. But when he looked down towards his hands, they were already searching Leon's chest pocket, coming up with a thick wad of cash. He heard the jingle of a few loose coins. Leon was still gasping for air like a fish out of water, paying no attention to Shane.

Shane stood, backing away and turning to face the corner of the small brick cell. His heart sank. He knew he didn't need to count the money, but helplessly, he did it anyway, thumbing fast through the bills. Instantly, taking the coins from Leon's pocket, he'd already seen it was twenty three cents. He'd pulled them out in two handfuls; seven cents in the first, and sixteen in the other. The last bill counted, Shane let the money fall from his hands to the floor, like he held a deadly cursed thing, like a faithless snakehandler.

Shane returned to stand over Leon, who was now laying on the floor, staring confused at the ceiling, breathing haggard and rough, and coughing. Otherwise, he seemed fine, and Shane could see he was coming back around, as he gently nudged his side with the toe of his boot.

"What th'fuck is that?", Shane asked accusingly, pointing to the scattered cash on the floor. "You do that? You steal it?"

Leon nodded, still not making any move to stand or even raise his head. He seemed stunned, like a bird flown into a picture window. Slowly, he coughed out, "Proceeds of crime. What's the point in puttin' it in a box, Walsh? A man has needs, an' we all need money these days. You expect me to believe you're that much of a boy scout, you never slid a sawbuck in your pocket? You ain't that decent. Whole world knows what became of Nora."

Shane froze, cold like death, like hell in the dark, far away from the fire, all alone; a cold that burned, turned flesh dead and black. No one knew what happened to Nora; even Shane would never be sure.

"This ain't your voice, man.", Shane's words came out hushed and gravely, a shudder rattling his teeth. "Get behind me. You fuckin' get behind me you motherless dog.", he let slide under his breath, like a benediction.

Leon just laid on the floor, a laugh rising slowly from him, caustic and sharp. Standing over him, Shane thought he saw a glint in his eyes a shade wrong, before his face fell, and Leon passed out briefly, coming to an entirely different man: his usual self, scared and witless.

"Walsh, what're we...", he stammered, "...what's going on here?" Leon looked around the cell, the color all but draining from his face when he saw the cash scattered on the floor, the mangled noose laying beside him. "What happened here?"

Helping Leon onto his shaky feet, Shane answered, "I should be th'one askin' you that. What the hell was that, huh? Takin' a dive through a hangman's knot? An' what were you doin' with that man? You get his name, by any chance?"

As Shane's intense eyes probed his for any lie, Leon answered back haltingly with a stutter he hadn't had before, but would never be without again, "I, I d-don't remember." Pulling back from Shane's stabilizing grasp, he averted his eyes. "H-h-he made me get that exact amount of cash for you. S-said it was what I owed you. Said it was what he owed you."

Horror and disgust contorted Shane's face, the corners of his mouth turned down, his hands contracting into hard white knuckled fists.

"Yeah, well, I don't want it. Not like that, I don't. You put it back where it came from, or you put it in evidence an' you lock yourself up in this cage an' wait for Rick. But I ain't touchin' those fifty pieces, you piece'a shit. Not a thing you, or that thing, can offer me that I want."

"D-don't be so sure.", Leon muttered softly under his breath.

Shane missed the statement, not hearing well in his right ear since the age of ten. He'd made the mistake of finally turning his face from his grandfather's blows; one errant haymaker landing so square on that ear as to break the eardrum. What he didn't miss, however, standing in the cool, silent cell with Leon, was that the man hadn't so much as flinched, let alone questioned, the last statement he'd made.

"Y-you gonna tell Rick?", Leon asked, cowering, but still sneering a hint of misplaced defiance at Shane.

"Don't see a way around that.", Shane answered back hesitantly, moving anxiously out of the cell, picking up the noose on his way out, and motioning for Leon to follow. "But, uh, I dunno. I dunno what he'll do about it, don't know how easy it's gonna be t'prove, unless you confess. This thing's bigger than you skimmin' a little cream. Why th'hell'd you try to swing? Because, I'll tell you one thing, whatever Rick's gonna do, it ain't gonna be that."

Their steps echoing in the empty hall, they walked back to the front of the station, silence hanging between them. Shane was troubled. He couldn't help but wonder what all this meant, and if Leon was entirely himself, or if he was. Once again, he'd been face to face with Scudder, and fully aware of it. He'd been angered; not willing to concede to fear, he'd at least admit his senses felt elevated. So why then hadn't he slapped the cuffs on him, thrown him in the cell? At the very least, why he hadn't just drawn and blown his head right off he didn't know. A powerful urge to do that had possessed Shane too, but ultimately, both times, he'd felt turned to a pillar of salt.

"I-I d-don't know why.", Leon finally answered, back in the bright sunlight of the hot afternoon, that now streamed through the front windows of the station. "I don't really know that I can say I remember it. Just seemed like the only thing to do."

"Sit down.", Shane said brusquely, pulling the rolling chair out from behind the desk and shoving it towards Leon. "He tell you how much y'all owed me, how much t'pay, or did you have that figured out yourself?" Shane paced rather than sitting.

"What's it matter?", Leon asked, a sardonic bite in his voice, as though it was him with the accusations to make. "Point is, I stole on the job, an' now you know it."

Shane didn't like how this conversation was turning.

Despite Leon Bassett's obvious fear, and his brand new stutter, he seemed hostile. He'd turned quickly unrepentant and defiant, a subtle thing revealed in his sullen tone, and the slight reflexes in the muscles in his face. Any shame he'd felt for his theft, or his recreant flirtation with suicide, had turned to a bitter vitriol directed at Shane for seeing him as he was. There was nothing in the world so vicious as a self righteous sinner found out. Confessions pulled from people against their will left them feeling violated and seeking shelter from you, slithering away, but the discovery of a proud man's shame left his fangs dripping venom.

Shane was beginning to wonder more about Scudder; if these were all machinations. He shook his head, the way one of those thin long-horned cattle shook the merciless stinging flies from its face. One of his calloused hands shot up to rub his eyes hard, dragging it down his stubbled face slowly, hoping to wipe away all this fog. There was no magic, no marvel in this world. Not here in Spearman, not anywhere. There was only good and evil, and no thing whatsoever in between, except man. Men held the seeds to their own salvation and their own damnation. Fuckin' Garbo, Shane thought. Now that dog was lucky; born innocent and got to just stay that way. Bliss in the eternal garden. Men, on the other hand, didn't get off so easy.

"Look, you dense or somethin', man?", Shane said with frustration. "I, uh, I don't really give a damn about the money at this point. You incapable of seein' the problem here? We got the sheriff outta town, joinin' a task force to catch a man we just let walk outta here. Your problems? We ain't gonna solve. Sort yourself out. I don't got th' time, nor the patience, for that. You can shit your pants on your own time. But you're senior deputy around here. Get out there an' apprehend that man. Maybe if y'manage to pull that off, I keep my mouth shut about your greasy palms, weak disposition, huh?"

Shane's brow raised and jaw set, he turned to leave, Leon rubbing the raw marks burned on his neck. Leon glared a petulant, angry jeer at Shane, but had no fortitude to say anything back.

As Shane left, his foot shot out on impulse, a sharp kick landing on the chair Scudder had sat in. "An' take this thing out back an' burn it.", he instructed Leon, stepping out the door, thankful for once to feel the hot, pure sun sear his skin.


	6. Hemlock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the events at the police station, Shane finds no solace alone in his store, and hurries back to Lori's company.

 

Night had a feel to it. Shane had never really liked the dark; not a fear so much, just a repulsed aversion. Life, death. Good, evil. Wonder, logic. Salvation, destruction. Day, night. Light, dark. High noon, and today was neither. Today was bathed in an eerie bright, somehow bereft of the ability to cast a shadow. Shane stared into the sun, and saw it eclipsed with half a red moon.

Shane's patched boots beat up puffs of the dry dust lost to the thin whistle of the arid winds as he led his reluctant horse through the alleys of Spearman. He'd arrest Scudder if he saw him again, he had no doubt. But as he dragged his horse and cart through town, heart thudding painfully in his chest, he doubted Scudder would choose to walk these winding alleys. No; he'd take the widest road out of town. That's why Shane found himself on the narrow, rutted paths behind the weathered slant-roofed sheds of Spearman. Old Braxton had whinnied and reared, eyes crazed and frantic, afraid to tread the main drag, and no soothing words could compel the animal.

He'd had no sign of the loathsome man as he approached the double doors at the back of his store. Shane looked cautiously both directions as he hitched his horse, and let himself in with his key, as though he was the fugitive being sought. Once inside, Shane's hand clapped silently over his mouth; a subconscious vestige of the peace he'd kept all these years. It was an uneasy peace; more the containment of a whirling fear and shame that he couldn't face and couldn't unleash on the world. He stood frozen, eyes locked on the Everly's unclaimed pallet, lost in excruciating thought. What did Scudder know about Nora? What had Leon heard, and where? Shane didn't even know for sure what he knew. What he'd heard chilled him. What he knew for a certainty was merely enough to haunt him with questions that he knew full well could never be answered.

Light filtered in through the dirty windows, lighting the dust that hung in the air like ghosts. A long while passed while Shane stood with his head hung, lost in the realms of the dead. Finally, he drew in a long breath, picked up his feet, and pressed past, eyes avoiding the tarped pallet once again. Lori was expecting him, and strange days or not, life was for the living. With alacrity, Shane gathered the few trade magazines and catalogues he had, along with the pages of paint chips, and thrust them hastily into a wooden crate still packed with straw before unplugging the icebox. He lifted the lid and retrieved the last item inside; the carton of vanilla ice cream he'd promised Lori.

Shane hurried to the back door, crate sealed and under one arm. He didn't consider his hurry to be off, blaming it on the slowness of his business, and the depressed economy. Truth be told, Shane was in a hurry to get back out of his store before anyone came to do any business that may require him to produce the ledger from beneath the counter, knowing somewhere in the halls of his subconscious that he'd then be compelled to add up the total of the Bassets' debt, only to feel his insides drop and grow cold when he saw the inevitable reflected; the debt would be the sum quoted by Scudder, and recovered from the hangman's pocket. Today's errand provided him a distraction plenty adequate to avoid the ledger though; Shane had known when he'd offered Lori a new door that the only one fit to their frame was under the tarp, sitting for years now, unclaimed, at the back of his store.

The Everly family had plans drawn by an architect all the way in Atlanta for a grand house to be built on their sprawl of farm land. The foundation laid, framing had begun when they had abruptly moved to a cow town in California called Brawley, and sold their land at cut rates from afar. They'd taken their only daughter, Nora, with them, and while a hurt and confused Shane waited, as weeks became months, for word from his intended bride, all he'd ever gotten was a terse phone call from her father, informing him that the move had been in the hopes of improving a cough Nora had suffered all her life, but that she had died a week prior. When Shane hopped the next train to Brawley, no one in the town had ever heard of anyone named Everly from Texas, and he'd returned, gutted and hollow, as the sound of her laughter turned to distant coughing, and the sight of her bright face fell beneath a veil, and his beloved Nora had been reduced to a greyed and muffled apparition that lingered in doubt beneath the surface of his tortured memory. Whispers of her demise had reached Shane's ears when cruel people saw fit to make their suppositions within earshot, and he'd heard theories and swears up and down that she'd taken her own life, and no one knew why.

The grand house had never been finished by anyone, and now stood a dry skeleton peeking from the dust, dressed in thistles, a roost for vultures, about five miles outside of town. Shane rarely had occasion to go that way, but from time to time, he'd ride out, scare off the carrion eaters, and pick wildflowers to lay just inside the threshold for the only girl he'd ever loved. The accoutrements she'd selected and ordered towards its finishing had remained at the back of his store, never once looked upon. So now Shane stood, refusing to hesitate despite all his desire to do so, as he boldly threw back the dusty tarp and wrestled the unfinished hemlock wood door that was wedged between the pallet and the wall, dragging it awkwardly outside while holding the back doors open with a foot.

To his relief, a short shadow was cast across his horse and cart. The eclipse had passed, and Shane felt confident that Hack Scudder was gone too. A small consolation at least, as his breath caught in his throat in the dry, dust choked wind while he hoisted the heavy door onto the cart. Shane knew it wasn't the physical weight of the door he toiled under. It was the burden of Nora's memory.

Being one's own best friend was a blessing and a curse, Shane considered, as he clicked the reins, hurrying his horse out of town towards the Grimes' yard, and towards Lori's welcome company. Shane's mouth pulled up in a half grin; he never ran out of shit to say to himself--it was just that sometimes he didn't really want to hear what he had to say. After the day he'd been having, he was anxious to drown his one sided conversation out. One of his hands dropped to the handle of his Ithaca. Lori would no doubt make him leave it by the door.

Meanwhile, Lori was laying down on the bed in her room, eyes trained on the bare narrow slat ceiling above her. She'd hurried to cook up the rhubarb after Shane had left, but these days her body rapidly came to feel leaden and tired beyond explanation. She'd meant to close her eyes when she laid down, but had been so tired that she'd forgotten. Her hands laid motionless by her sides, fingers feeling the cornflower blue chenille bedspread beneath her. It had been one of her most expensive wedding gifts. Funny; she'd never thought about who it came from, not really anyway. Jean Walsh had given it to her, wrapped in plain calico, with a card signed from herself and Shane. It was only now that Lori wondered at it; it wasn't Jean's style, and she knew for a fact Shane had nothing to do it. Jean had cryptically asked her not to mention it. Lori now supposed it had probably been ordered for Nora. She shuddered, moving a hand onto her womb. Bringing a life, this life, into this world; a world where she'd never given a thought about all the pain wrapped up in that one plain square of calico until this very moment. This was a lonely world, where any thin kindness left intact was threadbare and faded. Her hands covered her abdomen, and she tried to pray, but found her words swirled and carried away in the whistles of the wind before they could form.

She didn't hear the click of the door being opened, when she was startled by a voice.

"Lori? 'S me. Can I come in?"

She willed her disobedient body to spring from the bed, smoothing her hair and dress, embarrassed to think Shane would know she was laying around in the middle of the day.

"Yes, yeah, by all means, come on in.", she called, hurrying out of her room, grabbing a feather duster from the linen closet on the way, trying desperately to make a good show of it.

"Hey, uh, I didn't mean t' bother you. Jus' didn't seem right to start taking your front door down before showin' you what I brought. You know, in case y'don't like it, or somethin'.", Shane said, standing just outside the door.

Lori joined him on the veranda, following him out to the back of the cart. "You kidding me?", she said, tracing the grains in the unstained wood, "This is beautiful. Almost a shame to paint it. But I don't suppose it would hold up long without."

"Hemlock wood.", Shane commented quietly, lost in the recollection that Nora had made him promise not to paint over its delicate pale lavender grain, no matter how much her father insisted. "No pitch in it. Almost impossible to shatter."

Lori squinted, looking over at Shane's downturned face. Fact was, she knew him almost as well as Rick did. She knew there was a punchline, and expected him to be grinning crooked with one eyebrow up. Instead, his face looked grim and tired, like a sadness had fallen over him like a shroud. She reached over and shook his arm. "Oh, c'mon Shane. I know you want to say it. I know you have a baseball pun in there somewhere. Something cocky to say about your pitching arm?"

Once upon a time, he had. He'd recommended that front door to Nora, thinking they'd someday end up in that house together, a long while in the future, when her parents were gone, and that they'd raise their family there. He'd kid with Nora that even his pitch couldn't shatter that wood, and that it might be a good choice for the team of ball players he aimed to make with her. He felt sad, but he let it pass over him, and resisted the urge to talk about it, or to tell Lori the story.

Instead, Shane smirked, and replied, "Hell, yeah, I do. You kiddin' me now? Between talkin' wood and talkin' pitch, I could go all day in the pun department. But it ain't no fun once you've guessed it, and I don't suppose half'a what I'd say would be appropriate for your delicate sensibilities anyway."

Shocked at himself, Shane recognized that for what it was: a flirt. He hadn't meant to. Lori was Rick's wife, and Shane respected those bonds. He'd been caught off guard, and had grabbed onto a familiar defense as he sought a stronger footing. As he searched Lori's expression, he felt relieved to see no horror written in her sharp hazel eyes.

A gradual lift pulled at one corner of Lori's lips, as she replied with a stifled laugh, "I don't think I've been delicate in a very long time. And sensible? That's one I've never been accused of."

Shane grinned and laughed back, eyes squinted in the midday.

"Ah, I don't know about that. When I first met you though? Not a chance. Out here, in Texas? Wearin' those, I don' know, those crown things? I remember that, from meeting you for the first time. Practically blinded me with all those paste stones. I remember tellin' Rick it was never gonna happen; you two. Said you'd be more likely to move off to Paris, France than Paris, Texas. Let alone to Spearman with a sheriff."

Lori shrugged, smiling back. "Well, you know Shane, I never had any offers from a Frenchman, so you never do know. But thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Nah.", Shane looked up at Lori, now crouched down to dog level, scratching Garbo's ear while her leg thumped the dirt. "You proved me wrong. Wasn't a real happy time in my life right then, an' I suppose it marred my outlook some."

Cursing the presence of that hemlock wood door, and its sudden effect on his honesty, Shane wished he could take that statement back. Without that option, he quickly changed the subject, pulling his hand out of the dog's mouth and wiping it on his pant leg as he stood, hurrying off to rummage up the paint swatches and magazines he'd brought for Lori.

"Well, I'll get started fittin' the new door, then.", he said, returning, handing her a bundle. "Here's all the swatches and whatnot. I can't say for sure I have every color, but I don't reckon there's anything here I can't approximate by mixing. Can tell you, there's one in there to have a look at. Called verdant, I think. No, viridian. Last I recall, that was supposed to be real stylish. Kinda nice too, since there's nothin' else green around here."

Lori's eyes were nothing but pinholes in hazel irises, the day was so bright. Maybe that was how they seemed to pierce right through Shane. He was no longer looking at her, but already up on the veranda with a screwdriver loosening the hinges, belligerently busying himself. Lori watched him intently. She'd quickly decided as beautiful as the door was, it needed to be painted over for Shane's sake. How was he to be expected to come over there every day, only to be faced with the door he'd ordered for Nora. She suspected the last person in this town to know a thing about style was probably Nora too, and had already ruled out Shane's suggestions about the color for the same reasons. Lori had another shade in mind anyway, as she sat in the rocker on the porch, thumbing through the paint chips.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story is very loosely inspired by a Canadian short story by Sinclair Ross called The Painted Door. It's going to carry from that a lot of tragedy. I'm also incorporating some elements and characters from an old HBO series called Carnivale that was completely amazing and set in this era as well. Don't worry if you haven't seen it; I'm writing this story so that TWD fans can enjoy it, and though everything will be set up as a mystery, I won't leave you guessing or hanging forever, nor will you need to know anything about Carnivale to follow this story; just giving credit where it is due!
> 
> I really, really hope y'all enjoy. The first few chapters will mainly be set up, but the second half of the story will be a lot of, um, action... 
> 
> Thanks to anyone who reads, comments or kudos! It always makes my day!


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